On 28 March 2024, 14 weeks before Britain’s general election, Sir Keir Starmer went to an iftar dinner at the end of the day’s Ramadan fast. It was held among the gilded columns of the Reform Club’s library, and its attendees also included David Lammy, who would shortly become Foreign Secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, now Secretary of State for Justice. Starmer and Mahmood both made speeches, and photos show them sharing a joke over their starters with the evening’s beaming host, a bald, middle-aged man in a charcoal suit.
His name is Muddassar Ahmed, and he has a worrying past: he used to be part of an organisation which ran campaigns to unseat Labour MPs in constituencies with big Muslim electorates. For a Labour leader to have dined with him would once have been unthinkable.
Nineteen years on, though, the host deemed his iftar such a success, that he gave both Lammy and Mahmood donations of £10,000. Perhaps with the help of such largesse, he and other Muslims with questionable backgrounds have enjoyed access to the highest levels of government. And some maintain links with Islamists who have extreme views.
Some of the policies they have championed represent longstanding radical demands: for the outlawing of criticism of Islam, for stronger support for Palestine, and for the downplaying of the ethnic element of the grooming gangs scandal. Over the course of a three-month investigation, I have charted the progress of some of these individuals and groups. The evidence suggests they are now a powerful influence on the Labour party and on the direction of the country.
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Ahmed was not always so cosy with Labour. During the Blair-Brown era, he was the spokesman for the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), a lobbying organisation driven by principles which include reviving the farid of Jihad and anti-Zionism. It also encouraged tactical voting against Labour MPs who didn’t share Muslim concerns. As Ahmed said at the time: “The Muslim vote is powerful. Thousands of Muslims are unhappy about the Government’s involvement in Iraq and lack of action in Palestine.” He advised that these voters should back candidates “likely to do the most for Muslims”.
In its ventures, according to a report by an all-party group of MPs, MPAC would use extremist rhetoric and circulate radical material, including articles from neo-Nazi and Holocaust denial websites. It described Zionism as an “octopus that penetrates every western nation and pushes it to start World War Three upon Muslims” and used antisemitic smears in its attempt to unseat Lorna Fitzsimons, then MP for Rochdale. One of MPAC’s leaflets falsely claimed that she had done nothing for Palestinians because she was a “Jewish member of Labour Friends of Israel”. It also claimed it was Allah’s will that Muslims vote Liberal Democrat. MPAC was forced to issue a public apology for the false claim about Fitzsimons, but she was still ousted by a Lib Dem at the 2005 election. Though Ahmed was its spokesperson back in 2005, he told me, via his lawyers, he now regrets being involved with the group and abhors “any antisemitism”. He also stated that his sole motivation for joining the group was in relation to an anti-war campaign against those supporting the Iraq War.
MPAC was only one of several organisations advancing Islamist agendas. Some worked via more delicate means. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), for instance, vehemently opposed UK support for Israel and the invasion of Iraq. It also boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day, and in 2009, its deputy secretary-general Daud Abdullah signed a declaration supporting Hamas. Gordon Brown responded by banning all “engagement” with the MCB, a policy followed by subsequent Tory and Labour governments. Nonetheless, it is still the largest Muslim organisation in Britain, and it still wields influence.
Inevitably, other organisations were spawned. With the MCB denied access to Whitehall, another Islamist lobbying group, Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) emerged in the 2010s. For a time, senior figures from both main parties attended its events. But MEND’s star began to fade in 2017, after a young fanatic killed five people and injured 50 by driving a car into them outside Parliament, and one of its directors claimed this was “not terrorism”. In 2023, its chief executive Azhar Qayyum reaffirmed his support for the Palestinian people and their right to armed struggle after the October 7 attack and called for Israel to be “dismantled”.
When the Tory communities secretary Michael Gove told the Commons that MEND was to be assessed for extremism, Labour responded by announcing that it, too, would not engage with MEND. But when one avenue is shut down, another opens. MEND is now part of a powerful coalition that today is increasingly applying pressure on the Labour government. The Muslim Vote (TMV), of which more later, includes several existing groups that openly supported the right to Palestinian armed struggle after the October 7 massacre, and which last year used its significant power to affect voting patterns. No wonder Labour is listening.
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But what do these groups want? Along with demanding a tougher line on Israel, the MCB and MEND have been making the same demand for many years: government acceptance of an official definition of Islamophobia, supposedly a unique form of prejudice. According to MEND, this would “provide much-needed clarity in legislation and policies that are intended to protect vulnerable minorities”.
But Khalid Mahmood, a Labour MP unseated by a TMV Islamist in 2024 — a man who had questioned whether women were raped on October 7 and dedicated his win to the people of Gaza — believes there is a deeper motive. Islamists, he said, see a wide-ranging definition as “a way of extending their control over the young in schools and universities. If they start to blame every mishap on Islamophobia, it will induce a victim mentality, and isolate them from the mainstream — so making them more vulnerable to Islamist influence”.
Under the Tories, the Islamists inched closer to success. A report issued in 2018 by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, whose co-chair was the current health secretary Wes Streeting, stated that “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”. The former Tory attorney general Dominic Grieve wrote the foreword, saying Islamophobia was “undermining integration”.
The APPG’s definition was attacked from both ends of the political spectrum. But some of those now close to Starmer welcomed it — including Muddassar Ahmed. In 2019, the Corbyn-led Labour Party endorsed the APPG definition, and this, said Ahmed, was a “momentous achievement driven by determined, visionary and indefatigable leadership”.
When, in 2024, Starmer attended Ahmed’s iftar, they also discussed how Islamophobia should be tackled and the Labour leader gave a speech in which he, too, pledged to deal with the “sickening rise in Islamophobia”. One guest felt sure that the evening marked a significant, political shift. Nafeez Ahmed wrote afterwards that Starmer’s speech revealed a new, more critical attitude to Israel and Islamophobia. Starmer had promised that a “Labour government will never turn a blind eye to that prejudice”.
Muddassar Ahmed insists that he regrets being involved with MPAC and doesn’t share the Islamist views of some of those who were involved. He also wrote an article in 2015 in which he was critical of MPAC and accused it of being disagreeable and problematic. But he is now the head of an international network of Muslim leaders called the Concordia Forum — and this network has controversial alliances.
In 2020, for example, the Concordia Forum hosted a series of online interviews. One was with Nelson Mandela’s grandson Mandla, who has since been banned from entering Britain for supporting Hamas and spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories. Another interview featured the Pakistani-American theologian Yasir Qadhi, who has defended the Holocaust denier David Irving and claimed that the American John Walker Lindh, who was captured after 9/11 fighting for the Taliban, was guilty of “youthful naivete, not treason”. Earlier this year, references to these talks vanished from the Concordia website, although they are still available on YouTube. And when I asked Ahmed’s lawyers, they told me neither he nor Concordia were aware of Mandela’s and Qadhi’s views, and did not “support or even tolerate any form of antisemitism or pro-terrorist sentiment”.
But Muddassar Ahmed still has other controversial friends. Last year, he spent time in London with a man he called a “renowned American Muslim scholar”, the Islamist Omar Suleiman. Suleiman’s accomplishments “speak for themselves”, Ahmed gushed, praising his “leadership” and “heartfelt dedication”. He did not mention the fact that Suleiman has also called for a violent “third intifada” and cursed Zionists as “enemies of God and humanity”. Speaking in January, Suleiman asked Allah to give “victory to our brothers and sisters in Gaza over these evil Zionists”. (Suleiman has said he is “not antisemitic”. Ahmed’s lawyers said his praise for Suleiman applied only “to his recognised work on interfaith dialogue and social engagement”.) Ahmed also has close ties to the repressive Islamist regime in Turkey led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Last month, he met some of its senior officials, and presented a “spirit of humanity award” to Erdogan’s deputy foreign minister Burhanettin Duran, praising his “principled leadership”.
With Starmer now in Downing Street, Ahmed has found further opportunities to lobby Labour. On 17 February, 2025, as the grooming gangs scandal raged through the press, Ahmed unveiled a Concordia opinion poll that found most British Muslims thought grooming gang victims should be given more support and were “deeply concerned” about them. So far, so uncontroversial. But Ahmed went on to express sentiments that appear to have no basis in the poll’s data: “These findings reinforce the reality that misinformation about Muslims in Britain is rife and unjustified… The recent attacks conflating Muslim communities with grooming gangs is simply unfounded.” (His lawyers said he “stands by” this statement, and was voicing “caution against the harmful and inaccurate conflation of entire communities with the actions of a criminal minority”.)
Launching the poll, Ahmed was flanked by disabilities minister, Stephen Timms, and the Labour MPs Naz Shah and Afzal Khan, both past recipients of Concordia Forum hospitality worth thousands of pounds. (The previous month, defying the official boycott, Timms had attended the MCB’s annual dinner, at which the Labour MP Abtisam Mohamed, who was later blocked from entering Israel, made a speech.) Ahmed also said the poll revealed that Muslims were “experiencing record levels of discrimination and hostility just for practicing their faith”. The Government, he urged, must do more to “engage British Muslims and ensure their voices are heard.”
Astonishingly, the very next day, Ahmed’s voice was heard in the state dining room at No 10. At a “round table” meeting between Muslim leaders and Starmer, Ahmed was pictured sitting two places to the PM’s left. The meeting, wrote another of the Muslim leaders present, marked a “reset” that would see the Government build “stronger partnerships” with Muslims.
Reset it was, for 10 days later the deputy prime minister and communities secretary Angela Rayner announced she was setting up a five-person “working group” to “provide the Government with a working definition of anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia”. Its chair would be the liberal Tory Grieve, veteran of the 2018 APPG report.
The backgrounds of its other members were rather different. One, Asha Affi, stood as an east London council election candidate in 2010 for George Galloway’s far-Left, Islamist-friendly Respect Party, whose policies included rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. (Asked about this and other radical Respect policies, she told me she had not supported them.)
Another member, Akeela Ahmed, is a longstanding associate of Muddassar and the wife of Nafeez, with whom she attended Muddassar’s pre-election iftar. In February, Akeela urged Starmer to end the boycott of the MCB, despite the fact it remains highly controversial: its deputy chief until January had visited and venerated the Hamas leadership in Gaza, while its new secretary-general says Muslim parents should teach their children to identify “primarily” as Muslims. (Akeela told me she knew nothing of Muddassar’s work with MPAC, nor his friendships with Islamists, and had a long record of interfaith dialogue.)
Akeela’s husband, Nafeez, has lobbied, with the help of Muddassar, for journalists to be forced to undergo training on how to cover Islam and Muslims. This lobbying came in 2012, when Lord Justice Leveson was conducting an inquiry on the ethics of the press. Muddassar Ahmed’s PR firm, Unitas Communications, submitted a document, drafted by Nafeez, to Leveson’s inquiry. It said there should be a statutory press regulator with powers to enforce “mandatory training” to journalists on how to cover Islam and Muslims, to levy “meaningful sanctions or penalties” and ensure more Muslims got media jobs. (Nafeez told me he thought the document was “an important contribution” that would make sure “the media does not engage in promoting inaccurate racist reporting against Muslims as a group”. Muddassar Ahmed’s lawyers said he still supported the document’s central demand, for “a more robust regulatory system capable of holding the British media to account for instances of inaccurate, racist anti-Muslim reporting practices” without “compromising the fundamental right of freedom of speech”.)
A third group member is the cross-bench peer Shaista Gohir, who has also previously expressed highly controversial opinions on the Middle East before the October 7 attacks. One of her tweets read: “The only reply to a murderer is resistance. #Free Palestine.” Another proclaimed: “The US are not much of a superpower when they are ruled by another country – Israel.” Others suggested Israel deliberately targeted Gaza’s children, that Israel’s power was so great that US elections were pointless, and that Hamas bore no responsibility for triggering Israeli airstrikes by firing rockets. Those who claimed it did should “go over and live one day of Palestinian life”.
Though her tweets date from 2014, and she insists that she is not antisemitic and opposes antisemitism, more recently, her son Faris, who is also her parliamentary assistant, has claimed that Israel fabricated evidence of the October 7 atrocities. In one instance, he posted a photo of dried blood caking the floor of a home where civilians were murdered, commenting: “Because they were caught with pink fake blood they’ve now done the opposite and got black paint or some shit,” following this with a laughing face emoji. (He told me: “I strongly condemn all forms of prejudice and discrimination, including antisemitism.”)
Meanwhile, Shaista previously downplayed the role of Muslims in the grooming gangs scandal. In 2013, she authored a report that deplored claims the gangs were a “Pakistani, Asian or even a Muslim problem”. This meant “right-wing populist groups have used this issue to fuel racism and Islamophobia, ignoring evidence… that the majority of offenders are White.”
Her study focused on victims of Asian heritage, and found most of those who preyed on them were from their own communities. However, she reassured readers she was “not suggesting that sexual exploitation is more of a problem in Asian and/or Muslim communities”. Her work was echoed in a report from MEND in February, which said the claim that grooming gangs were predominantly Muslim was a “myth” that reflected an “Islamophobic narrative”.
Lost in all this, meanwhile, is the view shared by many Muslims that there is no need for an Islamophobia definition at all. According to Mahmood, whatever comes out of Rayner’s group will harm, not help, British Muslims by “deepening their isolation and encouraging a victim mentality”.
Today, though, with Labour under existential threat from Reform on one side, it is haemorrhaging votes and seats to candidates backed by Islamists on the other. It therefore finds itself under significant pressure to appease that lobby. Much of this is being applied via MPAC’s spiritual successor, TMV. Much as Ahmed did in 2005, last year TMV mobilised the now far larger Muslim electorate in the General Election. After months of vigorous campaigning, the group issued an appeal to all Muslims on the eve of the poll, asking them to vote for candidates it backed.
The results were spectacular. In the 21 constituencies where Muslims make up more than 30% of the electorate, Labour’s vote share fell by an average 29 percentage points. The safe seats held by Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and other ministers became marginals. Prominent MPs such as shadow cabinet member Jonathan Ashworth were turfed out, and TMV helped the ex-Labour renegade Jeremy Corbyn return to Parliament. One of the TMV coalition’s leading members is MEND — the organisation with which Labour had severed its links. MEND had now had its revenge.
Khalid Mahmood, whose 15,000 majority was wiped out in Birmingham Perry Barr, tells me that in its anxiety to staunch the loss of votes, Labour has failed to exercise due diligence. “People have got through to the leadership without any vetting,” he says. “I’m shocked by some of the stuff they’ve been involved in, and yet they’re going to be determining important areas of policy, especially on Islamophobia. How does a government minister appoint people with these connections?”
According to Mahmood, the challenge from Muslim radicals also explains why Starmer has refused to hold a national inquiry into the Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs. Islamists, he points out, often claim that the attention paid to the gangs’ ethnicity is itself driven by Islamophobia: “They like to say that overall there are more white abusers, but real, horrendous crimes have been committed by Pakistanis and Bengalis. There have been key gangs in these communities, and this has got to be dealt with.” Thus Labour’s “trepidation” over TMV may increase the future risk to vulnerable girls.
Back in 2012, when Starmer was director of public prosecutions, there seemed to be no such trepidation: Starmer said there was “clearly an issue of ethnicity that has to be understood and addressed”. But in April, his safeguarding minister Jess Phillips made clear there would be no national inquiry into grooming gangs. It is worth noting that in 2024, a TMV challenger slashed her majority from more than 10,000 to just 769.
Meanwhile, the lobbying continues, with familiar faces cropping up at the new organisations replacing those which have been barred from Westminster. In March, Akeela Ahmed — one of the five members of Angela Rayner’s Islamophobia “working group” — launched a new British Muslim Network (BMN) which promises to ensure that “British Muslim perspectives and experiences can engage with and shape policy”, and its supporters include the ex-Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi, who has often appeared at MEND events and reportedly once advised it on a “makeover”.
What might those perspectives be? They seem unlikely to be amenable to free speech. Akeela’s BMN co-chair is the Leeds imam Qari Asim, who met King Charles at Buckingham Palace in February after signing “reconciliation accords” with Jews. Asim was an adviser to Michael Gove until he was sacked after an argument over free speech and blasphemy involving the screening of a film about Mohammed’s daughter, The Lady of Heaven.
This is not the only question mark on his record. Asim also has ties with Pakistani imams who revere Mumtaz Qadri, who was executed in 2016 for assassinating the Punjab governor Salman Taseer. Taseer had spoken out against the use of the death penalty for blasphemy — thus incurring the wrath of hardliners. Asim has visited Qadri’s supporters in Pakistan and hosted others at public events in England praising them as “incredible”, “remarkable” and “insightful”. (Akeela Ahmed told me she did not know of Asim’s links with Qadri’s supporters, and does not share their views. Asim, for his part, said he is opposed to blasphemy laws, does not share the imams’ views of Qadri, and regards Taseer’s murder as a “repugnant crime”.)
Today, though, the Islamist lobby is in a far stronger position than when Brown excommunicated the Muslim Council of Britain. Exercising its religious muscle, TMV has toppled Labour MPs, is the biggest electoral threat to survivors such as Jess Phillips, and has scored significant wins in the recent council elections, including in Lancashire where there were victories for Maheen Kamran, who wants to prevent “free mixing” between men and women, and Azhar Ali, the Rochdale by-election candidate dropped by Labour last year for antisemitism.
So while many moderate Muslims reject Islamism, TMV can call on a growing voting bloc to drown out those moderate voices. And even though individuals such as Muddassar Ahmed reject these radical organisations, they nonetheless owe their access to the corridors of power to the sectarian vote marshalled by TMV, putting them in hoc to the actions of a group with radical connections.
And they are convinced their day is coming. On the day after the 2024 General Election, TMV boasted: “This is just the beginning, not the end. This has always been a five-election campaign… To all the naysayers who said the Muslim community can never unite, can never coordinate — tonight you had your answer. We take one step towards The Almighty, and then His help comes raining down.”
